WOLFSKIN

I let my sister wear the parka that belonged to my husband when he was fourteen and growing up in Yankton, South Dakota. It was pale blue with a gray fur trim around the hood that Mike told me was wolf, but now looked like dirty fuzz from the bottom of the couch. It fit her well and I admired her petite form while she twirled around. She stuck out her arms to show how the parka was too big for her, how it swallowed her whole.
"That's good," I told her. "Because you'll generate extra heat in there."
But she was worried about her wrists. The parka she said didn't quite fit around her wrists. Wouldn't the cold leak in? Her wrists were thin and bony and she called them delicate.
"It doesn't matter," I told her. "The cold always finds a way in."
We left for the funeral around noon. The day turned out to be one of those sun beating off the ice days, where you better wear sunglasses or the shards of light pierce your eyes like icicles. It wasn't cold enough for her so she took off my husband's light blue parka with the gray wolf fur trim and threw it on the ground and let it lie underneath a tree trunk while she walked back to the open hole, twirling the gold bracelets on her delicate wrists. She gave me a sheepish smile and said, "I was getting hot."
I wanted her first Nebraska winter day to be sharp and frigid. I wanted to take her sliding across a black ice highway, or get her lost in a blizzard. I wanted to give her an experience she could take home to Orlando and tell her husband while they sipped iced tea around their blue water pool with the pink hydrangea bushes and yellow tile. I wanted today to be anything but a shiny, sparkling day.
After the funeral was over I picked up my husband's parka and put it on over my black dress. I sat down on the ground, underneath a tree and pulled the hood over my veil. I sniffed as hard as I could, sniffed like a she-wolf looking for her mate, but I couldn't detect any trace of Mike, just old fur and dust. I sat and howled while everyone walked to their cars.
My sister was wrong, it wasn't too hot for the parka. I could feel the chill congealing the marrow of my bones.